An office panelling system is disclosed in our earlier U.S. Pat. No. 4,535,577 which is incorporated herein by reference. This system has individual office panels which are connected in an end to end manner or in an angled manner. Each office panel has an interior frame to which decorative or functional cover elements are secured to provide a finished surface to either side of the frame. Various horizontal channels are provided across the frame for securing of office accessories such as work surfaces, overhead bins and other accessory structures. This panelling system provides ready access to power at desk height. This is achieved by providing an access door at approximately desk height which access door can be hinged about top hinge axis exposing a compartment within the office panel frame. The face of electrical receptacles are provided in a horizontal member of the frame and electrical equipment and can be plugged into the receptacle. In addition, excess electrical cord is stored in the panel behind the access door. In this structure, the hinge access door is urged by gravity to a closed position with the access in contact with the sides of the frame.
There are other office panelling systems where the securement of a hinged access door is similar to the securement of other releasable elements applied to the frame. For example, some releasable elements are merely held by a spring clip type arrangement to the face of an office panel frame. These securement approaches can use a conventional plug and receptacle type arrangement or as shown in our earlier patent can use a hinge and spring clip type arrangement where the elements pivot about a lower surface of the element and engage spring clips at an upper surface of the element.
Originally office panel systems were designed to support a work surface at a predetermined height and the lower edge of the access door was positioned slightly above the level of the work surface. In this way, the hinging of the access door outwardly would expose the electrical plugs behind the access door. With increased computer technology variable height work surfaces were more common and the predetermined relationship of the work surface and the lower edge of the access door was not necessarily present. Workers have personal preferences with respect to work height which can be dependent on their physical size, and/or their preferences and it has also been found that changes in the work station during a day is also desirable. There are now many arrangements from relatively simple height adjustment arrangements to hydraulic height adjustment arrangements whereby the height of a work surface is easily changed.
In many cases a work surface is at the predetermined height and does have the required relationship allowing the access door to pivot outwardly missing the work surface and thus the access door works in its intended manner. However, in other circumstances the work surface is positioned to block the access door. Fortunately once a work station is set up access to the interior of the panel is less frequent.
The present invention in a preferred embodiment provides a structure which allows convenient access to the interior of the panel frames regardless of whether the work surface is at a height overlapping with the access door.